Chevron Tile Backsplash

Chevron and herringbone are not the same

In a herringbone the pieces are plain rectangles turned at right angles to each other, so the end of one meets the side of the next and the zigzag is staggered and broken.

In a chevron the ends are cut at an angle and the pieces meet point to point, so the zigzag is continuous and the joins form an unbroken V running up the wall. Look at where two pieces meet and the two patterns separate immediately. Herringbone mosaics covers the other one.

Left hand and right hand pieces

This is the practical consequence of the angled end and the thing most often missed. Every chevron needs two mirror-image pieces in equal numbers, one leaning left and one leaning right.

Where a product is supplied loose, those come as an A and a B piece and the pair has to be ordered together. Where it is supplied on mesh, the sheet has both already assembled and the question disappears, which is one of the reasons mesh-mounted chevron is so common.

The three kinds of chevron here

Three different products carry the pattern in this range. Small 2x6 pieces make a fine-scale chevron on a wall. Mesh sheets around 17x7 3/4 deliver the figure pre-assembled. Long 8x40 planks make a chevron at floor scale.

They are not interchangeable. The 2x6 is a backsplash and wall product; the plank is a floor, and a wood look chevron floor is a different project in every respect from a chevron behind a range.

Wood look leads the effects

Wood look is the largest effect group here, with marble look and a waterjet piece behind it, and that concentration is not an accident.

The chevron was a parquet pattern long before it was a tile pattern. A chevron floor in real wood is specialist work laid board by board, and a printed plank with the angle already cut is the version that does not need a parquet fitter. Wood look tile holds the effect in its other formats.

The angle changes the room

A chevron has a direction and it is a strong one. The V points somewhere, and whatever it points at is where the eye goes.

Run vertically up a backsplash it lifts a low wall. Run horizontally it pulls a narrow kitchen sideways. On a floor it takes the eye down the length of a hall. None of those is a neutral choice, which is why a chevron is rarely used as a background.

Scale decides everything

The same pattern at 2x6 and at 8x40 produces two unrelated surfaces, and the scale matters more on a chevron than on almost any other figure.

A small chevron reads as a texture: the V repeats so often that the eye takes it as a weave rather than as a shape. A large one reads as a single drawn figure running the length of the room. Between the two there is no middle setting, which is why choosing the piece size is really choosing which of the two effects the surface will have.

Finishes and where the field stops

Glossy and matte lead here, with rectified, honed, polished, crackled and natural faces behind them.

The end of the field is the part to settle early. A chevron cannot finish on a straight line without cutting every piece through its angle, so the usual answers are a border, a metal profile or half pieces, and each changes the quantity. Other patterns for the same wall are in backsplash tile.